OpenGeofiction
Hello fellow mappers,
I’ve had the pleasure to once again visit Prague during the last couple of days; hence I wasn’t able to update the wiki main page, and I forgot to do so in advance unfortunately.
One thing I wanted to share with you though was the following two pictures. I stayed in a cheap hostel at the edge of the old town of Prague. To access it, you had to enter a very inconsiderable front door, which led to a rather run-down stair case. All floors but one were occupied by either the reception or dorms, but on the 3rd floor there was the portrayed door, with a small sign declaring this to be the embassy of the Democratic Republic of Congo in Czechia.
My point is, I often find that when we (and this very much includes me) map embassies (especially our own ones) we tend to go slightly overboard, most commonly even assigning a whole building or even building ground with large gardens. While such embassies exist, they are most commonly found only between major countries, or perhaps due to a colonial past etc. Any two medium sized countries (think below 50 mil) that are not even situated on the same continent will usually not have that much demand for diplomatic office space that it would require a whole building. Of course in the end many other factor play into this as well, aside from the wealth and desire for representation of the represented country the general city shape will play into it as well. In the real world, dense European old town centres will be much less inviting for free standing embassy buildings than new world planned capitals such as Washington D.C. or Brasilia, or cities with generally low property prices such as developing countries. But nevertheless, I think I might go back one day and readjust both some Kojolese embassies abroad (coordinating with the respective mappers) and foreign embassies in Pyingshum.
The stair case:
The front door; to be fair, there was a flag hanging outside of the window facing the street ;)
For the ones worried; I actually had a very pleasant stay at this hostel, despite what these pictures might evoke ;) Since I’m about to get my tonsils removed my break from mapping is likely to continue for a little while, but I hope this post might pose a bit inspirational to some of you ^-^ Cheers,
Leo
Discussion
Comment from histor on 8 March 2017 at 13:56
Ohh - Prague. But you are right - not all embassies are in an own great building or a old “villa” in the better parts of the town.
Nevertheless - fiction can be better as reality and so every country in Latina and Zylanda can have the embassy with a little garden, a parkíng place, a garage and - if wanted - with a tennis-lawn. Or only in a house in a block of streets. Hamburg / Germany has a lot of embassies - most with a small garden in the better quarters. But worldwide indeeed I have seen embassies in all formates.
Comment from eklas on 8 March 2017 at 15:56
I’ve lived in a house like this (also in Prague, not the city center, but a former working class colony) for 14 years and honestly, the house in the pictures is in AMAZING technical condition. My house would have plaster coming off up to one meter of height, mold, squeaky wooden floors or run-down tiles and also an ant infestation. The heating had to be on September to June. I lived on the ground level by the way.
But anyways, it’s true many embassies look like this, especially when the countries’ diplomatic relations are insignificant. However many embassies in Prague look like the ones in OGF- villas with large gardens, see the neighborhoods Bubeneč, Dejvice or Střešovice.
Comment from eklas on 8 March 2017 at 18:40
Oh no, this brought up memories. I remembered our crazy neighbor, an 85 y/o cat lady, who would always turn up the volume on her TV and watch the country music channel. Or that one neighbor who would always ring our door and then complain about things we didn’t have any responsibility for. Or that one time someone literally stole the door of our basement storage unit. Or how there was homeless people in the basement and we had to evict them. Or how there were pigeons in the attic that would sometimes fly into the house. Or how the house had a second floor balcony that had chunks of cement falling off of it. Or how there was a pub next door which was known for being a drug den. Or how pedestrians would stop under my window and smoke cigarettes, yell into their phones or leave trash on my window sill. Or how I had to clean the windows all the time because of pollution. Or that one time the front door had frozen and I missed school. Or how I had trouble falling asleep because of the light coming out of the office building across the street that got built in the place where a park used to be. Or the noise caused by the traffic. Or how the only grocery store nearby was a warehouse that got converted into a wholesale supermarket.
I’m sorry for spamming, but I just got really emotional about my childhood and since I’m currently home alone down with flu, I felt like I could share it with you guys here.
Comment from Luciano on 8 March 2017 at 22:11
Indeed, embassies and consulates, especially of, or in, small countries) are often just offices in houses or buildings. That’s why I made the request that people place consulates in Tárrases on existing buildings just using a node, rather than mapping out compounds. I think that simple rule might go a long way toward encouraging more realistic diplomatic mapping - use nodes instead of areas to indicate the location.
Indeed large embassies often represent assertions of power: the US Embassy in Seoul is a giant compound that sits like a bauhaus palace right downtown, but the Mexican Embassy in Seoul is a small converted house, with no parking, on a side street with a bust of Benito Juárez and a tiny Mexican flag beside the door being the only indications.